UI killing FPS: This should be priority #1 to fix

[frtommy]

No I am not saying what you are claiming above at all. If you read everything I wrote you would see I was not saying "hey guys this is great what's your problem." All I am saying is "my computer does not have these issues and this is why my computer is not having the issues. In essence because you do not like the answer you are getting you are going to get your back up. That is so adult of you

 

And btw my CPU cost me 250 bucks US. I am also confused because first you said your issues started in 1.4 now they started in 3.0?

 

Sorry if u missunderstood. English isn't my mother language.

I say i stop play at 1.4-1.5 ( game works awesome )

back to play in 3.0 ( january 2015 ) game works perfect untill 3.1.

And like the othe guy say.

I have 2500k @4400 ghz. If i will do the bechmark for single thread , with the tools in that link u posted. I should be not in bad position.

Btw, my bad. I'm trying to talk with a wall.

 

edit= just for fun i run the cpu single threaded test with the tool. results are 2414.

Second place in the chart.

Edited April 8, 2015 by frtommy

[Ghisallo]

No your not. If you look at the conversation that I and Mfollin had you would see that there are issues you can do on your end to make things better, within limits.

 

I say within limits because this I think is the key issue...point of view. The only video games I have played since 1999 (with the exception of Call of Duty occasionally) have been MMOs. Every MMORPG I have ever played requires that when things get crazy you do not play at max settings if you want better than say 20-30 fps.

 

We also pointed out why things got a little worse with SWTOR. They added flashier graphics with 3.0, among a few other things. Now they could remove these flashier graphics BUT all doing this would do is result in at least as many complaints, just from another direction.

 

We aren't saying its right, not saying its a good thing. It just is what it is. Computers have gotten better BUT MMOs have added more crap right along side of that trend so the same issues exist. You can go to Rift, Tera, Aion, even WoW and see that when you go into an OP or a WF you need to at least turn down/off your shadows.

 

Complaining about it sadly will not fix the issue because just like irl some issues simply don't have a practical solution. It might make for tweeks but that's it. No use raging and getting bent over it. In the end if you do rage over it you are banging you head against a wall MUCH older than SWTOR.

Edited April 9, 2015 by Ghisallo

[Ghisallo]

Oh keep forgetting to add...overclocking a CPU works great for bench marks BUT it doesn't directly translate to fps increase. We over clocked my buddies 4690k a couple months ago to 4.7. He saw an average of 2 extra FPS here, with Battlefield 4 and other games that do rendering on the CPU. It may have been a little higher but it certainly was no more than 5. Overclocking will make for sexier benchmarking but when it comes to fps for some reason CPU architecture > clock speed. Don't ask me why, I am not an engineer, its just my and many other people's (including professional's) experience.

 

You'll also find this confirmed if you go to the sites and streams dedicated to overclocking. They'll show you better benchmarks, faster video rendering and such but when they test fps in actual games... You see very SMALL fps boosts. You do get a noticeable boost overclocking GPUs though.

 

This is why I tell people "if all you are doing is gaming overclocking your CPU should be seen as much as a vanity/epeen project as anything else. If you render video and stuff though it is definitely worth it."

Edited April 10, 2015 by Ghisallo

[Elracor]

Oh keep forgetting to add...overclocking a CPU works great for bench marks BUT it doesn't directly translate to fps increase. We over clocked my buddies 4690k a couple months ago to 4.7. He saw an average of 2 extra FPS here, with Battlefield 4 and other games that do rendering on the CPU. It may have been a little higher but it certainly was no more than 5. Overclocking will make for sexier benchmarking but when it comes to fps for some reason CPU architecture > clock speed. Don't ask me why, I am not an engineer, its just my and many other people's (including professional's) experience.

 

You'll also find this confirmed if you go to the sites and streams dedicated to overclocking. They'll show you better benchmarks, faster video rendering and such but when they test fps in actual games... You see very SMALL fps boosts. You do get a noticeable boost overclocking GPUs though.

 

This is why I tell people "if all you are doing is gaming overclocking your CPU should be seen as much as a vanity/epeen project as anything else. If you render video and stuff though it is definitely worth it."

 

Getting more FPS is mainly about 2 factors: CPU and GFX. RAM matters as well, but most DDR3 ram supply all the bandwidth needed. Overclocking CPU won't help much if your GFX is already at 100% load. Instead, overclocking your GFX at that point will give more FPS (or overclock both).

 

If you look at benchmarks for BF4, you can see that difference:

GFX: http://www.techspot.com/review/734-battlefield-4-benchmarks/page3.html

CPU: http://www.techspot.com/review/734-battlefield-4-benchmarks/page6.html

 

In those benchmarks, the difference between the top GFX and e.g. the fifth one is rather large while the difference between the best CPU and the fifth is pretty much invisible. You also need to consider the differences between Battlefield 4 and SWTOR. BF4 is very well engineered and can make use of several cores. SWTOR can barely use 2. Furthermore, even when everything is set to max, my GTX 970 is not exactly sweating when running SWTOR, usually dancing around 40-70% load.

 

And just as an actual example, when I stand in the spot I showed you earlier, I get ~37 fps with my overclock and ~31fps without the overclock. When your FPS is down in the 20-30's like it is in this area, 6 fps matters quite a bit. The same goes for Operations and Warzones where your CPU is pressured, those extra FPS can make turn the slideshow into something almost watchable.

 

Overclocking will make for sexier benchmarking but when it comes to fps for some reason CPU architecture > clock speed.

 

That completely depends on the architectures you are comparing. Each new generation of Intel Core CPUs are getting improvements, but a very overclocked 2500k (some of them reach 5Ghz) will still beat a stock 4Ghz 4690k.

A 5Ghz FX-9590 CPU on the other hand will get its *** whooped by a 4Ghz 4690k when it comes to SWTOR.

Edited April 10, 2015 by MFollin

[Zoom_VI]

SWTOR can barely use 2.

 

Did you try playing with swtor program settings in the GPU control panel? I messed around with the ones on my Nvidia card and now I'm seeing even load across all non-parked cores.

[Ghisallo]

Getting more FPS is mainly about 2 factors: CPU and GFX. RAM matters as well, but most DDR3 ram supply all the bandwidth needed. Overclocking CPU won't help much if your GFX is already at 100% load. Instead, overclocking your GFX at that point will give more FPS (or overclock both).

 

If you look at benchmarks for BF4, you can see that difference:

GFX: http://www.techspot.com/review/734-battlefield-4-benchmarks/page3.html

CPU: http://www.techspot.com/review/734-battlefield-4-benchmarks/page6.html

 

In those benchmarks, the difference between the top GFX and e.g. the fifth one is rather large while the difference between the best CPU and the fifth is pretty much invisible. You also need to consider the differences between Battlefield 4 and SWTOR. BF4 is very well engineered and can make use of several cores. SWTOR can barely use 2. Furthermore, even when everything is set to max, my GTX 970 is not exactly sweating when running SWTOR, usually dancing around 40-70% load.

 

And just as an actual example, when I stand in the spot I showed you earlier, I get ~37 fps with my overclock and ~31fps without the overclock. When your FPS is down in the 20-30's like it is in this area, 6 fps matters quite a bit. The same goes for Operations and Warzones where your CPU is pressured, those extra FPS can make turn the slideshow into something almost watchable.

 

 

 

That completely depends on the architectures you are comparing. Each new generation of Intel Core CPUs are getting improvements, but a very overclocked 2500k (some of them reach 5Ghz) will still beat a stock 4Ghz 4690k.

A 5Ghz FX-9590 CPU on the other hand will get its *** whooped by a 4Ghz 4690k when it comes to SWTOR.

 

I do keep forgetting ratios don't I (6 meaning a lot more to 30 than to 80 say) lol. And it was the max fps numbers I was talking about (we had like a jump from 71 to 73 fps on his battlefield 4 as an example).

 

Guess really what I am trying to say is many seem to see these things as being resolvable by a "magic bullet". " I have CPU X over clocked to Y" or "I have sli running with uber GPUs" etc. Because of what SWTOR has in the game it is complicated as hell. Have an AMD CPU you can be screwed because they are horrible at single threading. Have a meh CPU and a killer SLI set up and you may be screwing yourself because the game does a fair amount of rendering on the CPU. Have SWTOR tone down the flashy particle effects, pretty decent shadows etc and people will complain about that. Atm this seems to be of a "make the best of it you can" scenario vs a "silver bullet" and fixed one

 

I was thinking of one possible solution the other day though. Rift had MAJOR fps issues for a while due to it's mostly single threaded nature. Its still not great but a lot better.

 

They made this better because somehow, without changing the engine, they split rendering. So instead of the CPU completely handling the shadows rendering different parts of the render were handled in sequence...part of the CPU then there was a hand off to the GPU to finish. They even did something nice in the preferences. When you mouse of shadows, cloaks, particle effects, whatever it will say GPU, CPU or GPU/CPU intensive. This way if you know your systems limits its a no brained to figure out what settings need to be reduced. Good CPU click the CPU and joint functions and such.

 

All SWTORs UI says is "reducing this will increase performance" and that may not be strictly true depending on where the players bottleneck is

[Elracor]

Did you try playing with swtor program settings in the GPU control panel? I messed around with the ones on my Nvidia card and now I'm seeing even load across all non-parked cores.

 

I have tried it (Threaded Optimization -> On), but I'm not getting any more performance (fps) out of it. Just higher CPU load overall (and balanced as you say).

Edited April 10, 2015 by MFollin

[LordBeeDoO]

At least I would like to know if UI is considered fixed now or if there is something planned about it ...I believe that most people affected by UI fps issue which in fact prevented them to play a game (while before 3.0 they had it playable on high details) has already given up and left ..

 

And also I would like to understand the specificity of people affected by this, the real combination of things resulting in this. I myself play on 3 computers, 2 of them totally out dated and I got no spikes .. game just runs slows, but runs ... and here are people with powerful machines who are spiking from 50 to 5 fps

[Master-Paulus]

Some really good info in this thread . Like a few I have noticed a decrease in FPS since 3.0 has been released and I have been reading through this thread to try and pick up some tips to help make WZs and 16 player Ops run better.

Also as some have mentioned, when I turn off the UI the game seems to run smooth for me also.

 

My system specs:

• CPU: i5-3570k @ 3.40 (Stock)
  
• GPU: GeForce GTX 670
  
• HDD: Intel 180GB SSD which is where Swtor is installed on
  
• RAM: 8GB
  
• OS: Win 7 x64
  

I run Swtor in Full screen (Windowed) mode at a resolution of 2560x1440 as I have a dual monitor set up (27" Dells) and most graphics options are set to High/very high except for "Shadow Map Cascades" which is on Medium.

 

Normally I would have not too many issues in FlashPoints and mostly 8 player Ops. I did however notice a small delay when clicking abilities before they would engage/animation would start which made the game feel a bit rough - I mostly play Guardian's so always in Malee range.

 

Since my issues with WZ's and 16 player OP's was somewhat partly due to the UI I decided I would rebuild mine. I have been running a custom one I downloaded around 2 years ago. So I backed up all my custom UI files and then removed them from the default Swtor directory. I then fired up the game, and chose to use the Default "Extended Quickbars" UI and I have customised that to my needs.

I have now run a few Flashpoints, 8 player OP's and WZ's and the game performance seems to have improved for myself. Hitting my abilities is smoother now and my FPS is running slightly higher and is not as much of a slide show in war zones that is was before. I have however yet to try 16 player Op's, that will be a good test.

 

Unfortunately I can't provide FPS numbers as I didn't note them down before I started playing around with the UI, however this might indicated that their was something with my old custom UI that was causing more of a performance hit than one of the default ones...

 

Hopefully the above info might be able to help some folks - might be worth looking at your custom UI set ups just to see if anything could be bringing down your performance a bit.

[SVTCarnage]

Have they not fixed this? I just came back to the game, last played during patch 2.5. In warzones I am seeing under 30 fps, and sometimes I will hang in the 20's. My drivers are up to date, turning the UI off is a huge jump in frames.

 

My base specs: i5-2500k 3.0 oc'd to 4.0, GTX 970, 16gig's of 1600, 1050w psu.

 

It is a bummer, because I really want to get back into this game again.

[DarthMaulUK]

Have they not fixed this? I just came back to the game, last played during patch 2.5. In warzones I am seeing under 30 fps, and sometimes I will hang in the 20's. My drivers are up to date, turning the UI off is a huge jump in frames.

 

My base specs: i5-2500k 3.0 oc'd to 4.0, GTX 970, 16gig's of 1600, 1050w psu.

 

It is a bummer, because I really want to get back into this game again.

 

LOL. You can't expect Bioware to fix things now? Just look at the lack of patches, updates and server maintenance, especially this year. The UI is a car crash and the #1 this game chugs. Its more noticeable the 2nd week, when Lazyware don't do server resets.

[Aaryn]

Iam not even sure if the devs are reading Topics like this. Iam not even sure if they would fix those UI Problems... what iam sure about is, that they will add more and more packets to the cartell market.

 

As Long the Money "swims" into their pocket nothing great will Change.

 

Guys, its Electronic Arts! Bioware we know from KOTOR or Mass Effect 1 does not really exist anymore. All what Electronic Arts want is MONEY MONEY MONEY! They dont care much about their consumer as Long they pay. If the game runs bad, EA dont care!

 

Since years its the same with this Company. Ill pay an Sub till kotfe release, if this "addon" sucks iam completely away. Playing this since release and iam sick of this F2P Build with Focus on the damn cartell market.

 

Rise of the Hutt Cartell was a nice Addon... worth for paid but Shadow of Revan was such a big fail, they made Money only cause of the Name "Revan", known from the original Bioware Game "Knights of the Old Republic".

 

Well... much flame and whine but this is the Situation. To bad that EA is granted by Disney, to develope exclusive Star Wars Games, really to bad.

[SVTCarnage]

I am having fun with PvP even with the awful performance, but I'd be having a lot more fun if I could play warzones at 60 fps.

 

My marauder is 57, but once I hit 60 I am just playing ranked arena, so as long as arena performance is ok (ish) I can deal with it. If arena drops my frames below the 30s, that will become a issue.

 

I will try the custom UI thing, if I can figure that out.

[raunotonts]

Did this ever get addressed?

[Cindlehr]

agreed, please fix this!!!!

[ScarletElassar]

No, they havn't fixed it, it's still an issue, unfortunately.

[Nitblade]

No, they havn't fixed it, it's still an issue, unfortunately.

 

And i'd add that it isn't anywhere on the "Fix It" list as they left that problem alone for way too long completely ignoring comments about it

[raunotonts]

Time to get this thread popping again then. I dare to say 1/2 of the posts here have been complaints about the very issue. Group content is unplayable for a lot of people (i can imagine how many have quit because of this) and the fact that Bioware hasn't addressed this issue in 25 pages is horrible.

[SVTCarnage]

This is a major issue, its ridiculous. I should not be at 20 fps while fighting in warzones and especially not arena.

 

Specs: i5 2500k, gtx 970, 16gigs of 1600 ram, 1050w psu, etc.

Edited September 13, 2015 by SVTCarnage

[georqa]

changing game engine will be impossible, but optimizing UI is very much possible. they must take some time from CM and look into the UI,

I run

Amd fx 8350 oc 4.8ghz

16g ram

xfx 7870 video.

Average non-combat fps 90-110 (fleet 70-80 ), in combat 30-40 outdoors (25-30 8 man ops; 13-20 in warzones unplayable). if i turn of UI(ctrl+u) i never go down below 90(also there are no dips in fps)

This game would be so much fun with smooth fps, low fps effects your performance very much especially in warzones

[psikofunkster]

No, number 1 priority is to create more cartel market packs.

[OwenBrooks]

offhand if they can upgrade scaleform it should have an impact , but no idea if they can to be honest, other MMO games have so I imagine it should be possible just not sure on cost/effort

 

As to scaleform I cant mention anything further but feel free to google as to what it is, I got in trouble for discussing it a while back.

Edited September 19, 2015 by OwenBrooks

[SaerethDL]

Yeah i tried w/ and w/o UI... w/o UI is like 100% smoother, even on my 4790k and 980ti

[black_pyros]

No, number 1 priority is to create more cartel market packs.

 

So they can make a cartel market item that would optimize bad UI performance and sell it for bunch of cc's.

 

Note: Of course I would not be happy if they do that.

[georqa]

I am done with this game, just deleted it, i love the game itself, it is everything i want to keep me playing everyday except its not playable, its is broken